


The Choice

by takethembystorm



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Free Will, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6249988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of those offered power by Papillon are offered something else besides: a choice.</p><p>Imagery taken from the Late Great Terry Pratchett’s <i>Carpe Jugulum</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice

When Aurore Borell opens her eyes, the darkness before her—the quiet, heavy darkness of caverns, she reflects, or of ocean deeps—is so complete that for a second she thinks she’s blind.

She looks around her and immediately regrets it.  There’s light behind her, so painfully intense that it feels like a pressure on her back.  Her retinas scream in a moment of agony before she can shield her eyes with her hand.

After a minute, her eyes adjust.  The demarcation line between the light and the dark is sharp and absolute.  On one side is the furious light, a screaming presence that scours the eye.  On the other is the dark.  She straddles the line between them, her shadow a black stain on the comparatively grey darkness, streaming away from the light.

There are whispers in her ear as she notices this.  The voice is low and warm, a pleasant humming tone that assembles itself into words in her head, a memory of conversation after the fact.

“Hello, Aurore,” the voice said.

“Um,” she says.  “Hello?”

Her shadow twitches slightly.  “Hello, hello, hello,” the voice said in a lazy purr.  “A hundred thousand souls across Paris should be saying that, don’t you think, as they tune in to the news.  Hello, Aurore Borell.  How nice to see you; what’s today’s weather, Aurore Borell.”

The memory of her recent loss drives a spike of rage through her heart.  She finds herself nodding in agreement as the voice continues.

“But oh no, the _people_ ,” the voice said, an edge of scorn slicing its way in, “the _people_ think that they know best, the _people_ think they have the wisdom to decide for themselves, when they must be guided like children, like cattle, to perform even the simplest task.”

Her shadow rolls upwards from the dark in a sinuous, snake-like motion until it stands before her.  It twirls an insubstantial parasol in one hand, and stretches out the other.

“Why don’t you step into the shadow,” the voice said.  “Take my hand, and let us teach them the value of wisdom.”

Aurore steps forwards, and takes her shadow’s hand.

* * *

When Nino opens his eyes, he yelps as sudden agony spikes through his right eye.  There’s light, white and blinding, to his right and darkness, cold and absolute, to his left.  His shadow streams away to his left.

“The hell?” he murmurs, shading his vision with his hand.

“Hello, Nino,” the voice said.

Nino freezes in response.  His gaze darts to the right, then to the left.  He twists quickly to look over his shoulder as the voice laughed.

“Down here, silly,” the voice said.  Nino’s eyes are drawn down and to his left.  His shadow animates, the arm giving a jaunty little wave.  Nino waves back, twice.

“Um,” he says.  “Hello.  Who are you?”

“A friend, perhaps,” the voice said.  “Much like Adrien.  You love him dearly, don’t you?”

“Um, yeah,” Nino says, still hesitant.  “Dude’s a cool guy, who wouldn’t?”

“You feel his pain as though it were your own,” the voice said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Nino says, “but I feel for him, yeah.”

“But you agree that he is treated so, so cruelly by his father,” the voice said.  “No father should _ever_ treat a son like that, especially one so good as Adrien.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“How about I help you teach him the value of compassion, Nino?” the voice said.  His shadow twines upwards, until it stands before him, hand outstretched.

Nino reaches up to take it, but hesitates.  He takes another moment to think, and shakes his head.

“I don’t think so,” he says, voice hardening.

“Why not?” the voice said with an audible pout in its tone.

“Look, I’ve read enough to know about this kinda thing,” Nino says.  “This whole deal with the devil thing.  No dice.”

His shadow turns spiky with sudden rage, and Nino flinches backwards away from it into the light.

“You will take my hand,” the voice said.

“No!” Nino says, backing up another few steps.  The shadow seems to wither away as it attempts to follow him and is swallowed up by the light.

“You!  Will!”

“No!”

Nino turns and runs forwards, eyes closed against the searing brilliance of the light.

He never sees it when his shadow lances forwards and envelops him in darkness.

* * *

Alya doesn’t open her eyes.  She doesn’t need to; the light is so intense that it shines pinkly through her eyelids.

“Hokay,” she breathes, “this is weird.”

“But fascinating, is it not?” the voice said.

She whirls, eyes opening in instinctive alarm.

There’s no one there.  She glances back towards the light and around her; nothing there, either.

“Down here,” the voice said, with a trailing giggle in the words.

She looks down, at the bands of shadow trailing from her feet and legs into the darkness.

“Uh,” she says.  “What?”

Her eyes trail of their own volition upwards, towards the distorted shape of her shadow-hips and shadow-waist, her unnaturally broad shoulders, until they land on the cheery wave her shadow is giving her.

“What?” she says again.  “The hell is this?”

“Well, wouldn’t you like to know?” the voice said coyly.

“Kinda, yeah,” Alya says, peering closer.  “I’m not even moving, how is this possible?”

Her shadow turns a little cartwheel, the voice dropping laughter into her mind.

“Many things are possible with me,” the voice said.  “Things impossible are possible with me, Alya.”

“Well, obviously,” Alya says.

“Impossible things like me,” the voice said.  “And impossible things like, shall we say, the _education_ of people.”

There’s a brief pause in the flow of the conversation.

“What are you saying?” Alya says slowly.

“I’m saying that we could make them see _truth,_ Alya,” the voice said, low and eager.  “No one _cares_ about the truth, do they?  They care only about what is most _convenient_ for them, what is _easiest_ for them.  No one has the kind of _courage_ that you do, Alya, to tirelessly seek the _truth._ ”

She’s nodding along with the voice by the second sentence.

“Take my hand, Alya,” the voice said, as her shadow reaches upwards and holds out an insubstantial hand.  “Let us bring the light of truth to these ignorants.”

Alya reaches out hesitantly and takes her shadow’s hand.  There’s an electric shock of sensation that runs up her arm, and their clasped hands shine with sudden illumination, clean and fluorescently steady.  It seems to her that her shadow grins, though there’s no contrast in the shadow for her to tell.

Her shadow turns without further talk and starts to run into the darkness.  Alya follows, carrying the light with her, hair streaming behind her in an insubstantial wind.  The brilliance of the furious light and the razor-edged boundary between it and the dark dim and wink out as they journey deeper and deeper into the dark.

The light of their hands winks out suddenly, and darkness envelops her wholly.

* * *

Marinette keeps her eyes closed against the fury of the light.  She’d really rather not experience the searing pain of her retinas being burnt away.

“Hokay,” she breathes.  “What in the world is happening right now?”

She reaches out around her, groping blindly before her.  There’s nothing there, and she takes one or two stumbling, hesitant steps forwards, arms still outstretched.  Still nothing.

She risks cracking an eyelid and immediately regrets it; the light, shining pinkly through her eyelid, is as radiant as the surface of the sun.  The light burns mercilessly into her eye.

After a moment, it seems to dim as her vision adjusts, and she opens her eyes fully.

The light is to her right; her shadow straddles the boundary between it and the dark.

“Hello, Marinette,” the voice said.

Her shadow walks a circle around her as she stares, its head bobbing and twitching as though it is looking her up and down.

“Um, hi?” she says.  It really was very disconcerting, seeing a shadow streaming _into_ the light rather than from it.

Her shadow seems to complete its examination, and its insubstantial hands come to rest on its hips.

“You really are very pretty,” the voice said.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Marinette mutters under her breath.

The voice patters quiet laughter across her mind.  “Merely an objective truth,” the voice said.  “Much prettier than Chloe, at least.  And braver and nobler besides, though that isn’t exactly a high bar to clear.”

“Okay,” Marinette says after a moment.  “Your point?”

“So why should _Chloe_ be the one to escort Adrien in three weeks’ time?” the voice said.  “No _matter_ that it is only one of his father’s parties.  No _matter_ that it is but pageantry.  Should you not be the one on his arm, Marinette?  You, who genuinely cares for him?  You, who possesses actual skill and talent?  Not some painted, dyed fakery of a girl?”

“That’s being a bit harsh,” Marinette says, though her voice lacks conviction.

“And he _likes_ you,” the voice continued.  “He really does, it’s so cute.  He maybe even loves you.  But love is such a rare commodity these days.  No one really _believes_ in it, in its power, in its truth.”

Her shadow is standing before her now—when had that happened?—its arm outstretched.  They stand there, she and her shadow, straddling the line between the light and the dark.

“Take my hand, Marinette,” the voice said.  “We shall teach the _world_ the power of love.”

She blinks at it.  “Yeah,” she says, “no.”

Her shadow spikes with sudden unconstrained fury, but Marinette takes a step backwards from it, her right arm coming up, her palm held outwards in a gesture of denial.

“I’m not stupid,” she says as her shadow hurls itself against her again and again, its motion arrested bare centimeters from her each time, twining, crushing tendrils of darkness stopped by an invisible barrier of mental effort.  “I know what this is about.”

Her shadow grows enormously, a giant now, and swats at her with a hand the size of a house.  Despite her defense she’s thrown from her feet, flying into the darkness.  The seething wall of light dwindles into a pinprick spark.  The maw of darkness closes in around her, hungry and freezing.

Marinette grits her teeth and draws it in.

Light pours into her in a searing stream, her skin shining with sudden luminescence.  Her shadow reels from it, as does the dark.  Screams of outrage latch claws into her mind, but she throws them away with an effort of will.

It burns; it hurts; it freezes and soothes.  The light is a physical presence around her as she stands.

“I don’t _think_ so, shadow,” Marinette says.  “You’re not tempting _me_.”

The light explodes from her in a tide, and the darkness is banished before it.  Her shadow vanishes with an outraged screech that leaves gouges in her mind.

Marinette opens her eyes.

* * *

Adrien can feel the chill of the void before him, and the distant winter sunlight warmth of the light on his back.  He looks wearily down at his feet and then looks up, following his shadow.  It stretches out before him, kilometers long.

“Oh,” he says, resigned.  “This again.”

“Hello, Adrien,” the voice said.

“Buzz off,” he says.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” the voice said, affecting hurt.

“Old I’d call you,” Adrien says.  “Friend?  Not a chance.”

“I could be a friend,” the voice purred.  “The best you’ve ever had.”

“That’s what you said the other times, too,” Adrien says.  “And my reply is the same as then.  Buzz.  Off.”

“Ah, but back then I could give you only _paltry_ things,” the voice purred, dragging slow furrows across Adrien’s brain with the words.  “Freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from despair, from heartache, from loneliness.  Such _little_ things.”

“I fail to see how the situation has changed,” Adrien says.

“Now I have so much more _power,_ ” the voice said.  “I can offer all of that to you and more now, Adrien.  I can give you the love of she who spurns you.  I can give you the acknowledgement of your father.  I can give you all the adulation Chat Noir is owed.  That is within my grasp now, Adrien, my grasp and _yours_.”

The shadow coils upwards on itself like a winding spring until it sits at eye level.  It reaches out, proffering an incorporeal hand.  “Join me,” the voice hummed.  “Join me and be free, Adrien.”

Adrien crosses his arm over his chest.  “No.”

“Can you _remember_ what it felt like, to be free?” the voice cajoled.  “I can give that back to you, Adrien.”

He can.  The pain of that desire lends fire to his next words.  “I said no,” Adrien snarls.  “I refuse.  I won’t.  Do you want me to start saying ‘go blow yourself’ in Mandarin?  ‘cause I can.”

The shadow lashes out at him, viper-quick, and before he can quite realize what’s happening he’s been seized in its insubstantial grasp.  Its talons dig into his back while its thumbs crush the breath from his lungs.  “For all your defiance,” the voice purred at him, “you are _weak,_ Adrien.  Give in, and all of this will end.”

He doesn’t have enough breath to scream, or even to spit.  He settles for wriggling one of his arms free and making a rather rude gesture at his shadow.

The voice howled in rage, the memory-sound slicing into his mind, and his shadow hurls him to the side, deep into the darkness.  Absolute icy black swallows him whole as he flies, the light dwindling into a pinprick before winking out.  His shadow slams into him a moment later.

Adrien struggles as much as he can against his shadow’s terrible strength, as the darkness roars down on him.

It’s nowhere near enough.

Despair and self-loathing and the utter sucking void of loneliness spill into him in a flood, drowning out all thoughts of resistance.  The pain follows a beat later, a mental blow that makes him curl in on himself, whimpering.

After an eternity, the pain fades to something more bearable.  His shadow picks him up and sets him on unsteady feet, then proffers a hand again.

“Weak,” the voice purred.  “So weak.  On the bridge you had your driver.  With the noose you had your pet quantic god.  But here?  Now?  You are alone, and you are ever so _weak_.  Give _in,_ Adrien.  You cannot withstand me much longer.”

Adrien considers his shadow’s hand with dull eyes.  Then he reaches up and takes it.

The voice hissed in triumph.

It hissed in startled pain a second later as the area around Adrien’s grasp starts to glow a dull ember red.  The shadow looks up in time to see Adrien’s other hand snake outwards, clamping down on its throat.  They’re borne down under Adrien’s weight.

His shadow struggles against the sudden assault.  Earlier, it could’ve overpowered him easily, but now Adrien is powered not by mere will but by an implacable fury, as terrible and unstoppable as a searing summer sun.

“I don’t think so,” Adrien says quietly.  His shadow gouges at the hand clamped around its throat with its one free limb, but fails to budge it.  “See, I know what you are, now.  Took me a while to work it out, but I know what you are, and you don’t impress me.”

The ember glow spreads from the shadow’s hand and neck, growing brighter as it goes.  Adrien’s skin and hair seem to take on a measure of the same glow as he presses further, leaning his weight into his shadow’s throat.

“I’ve more or less kept you under wraps, you see,” Adrien says.  “Yes, there was the bridge, and the noose; no one’s perfect.  And yes, you’re stronger now.  But I’m stronger than you, and I know _why_ now.”

Adrien leans in, his flesh turning incandescent.  His hair begins to float about his head, buoyed by an unfelt updraft.

“You aren’t some dark god,” Adrien says.  “You aren’t some force of nature.  I know who you are, Adrien Agreste, and you don’t scare me any longer.”

Fire erupts from his skin with a shriek, a great howling pillar of crimson with specks of corruptive black scattered throughout.  His shadow reels from it, first from the terrible light, then from the pain as the fire catches in its insubstantial flesh.  The color of the pillar’s flame brightens from red to orange, from orange to yellow, from yellow to blue and then to something so bright that color no longer matters as his shadow is consumed.

Adrien opens his eyes.


End file.
